EARTH'S GARMENT OF GREEN 



Those ferns you saw growing last summer are such 

 beautiful things! When you see a clump of them in 

 the deep woods they look so delicate and soft that 

 they seem like long, green feathers. When a gentle 

 breeze steals through the trees they bend and wave 

 so gracefully that they make the forest seem like 

 fairyland and the ferns themselves like the sway- 

 ing forms of fairies as they dance in groups upon 

 the forest floor. 



The ferns that grow upon the cliffs nod and wave 

 their long feathery fronds at you as if to say, ''Come 

 up here with me and see all that I see." 



But you cannot get up there. The crevices into 

 which the fern tucks its feet or roots are too small 

 and too far apart for your feet to climb up by, and 

 you cannot get to the fern, nodding so gently to you 

 from its rocky cliff. You wonder how it grew there 

 and how it can keep on growing. Then there are 

 other ferns that cover the smooth rocks or the bare 

 cliffs so thickly that the rocks look as if they were 

 wrapped in a mossy blanket. Sometimes you can 

 hear water trickling down behind the fern, and you 

 almost think that you are in a fairy dell. 



Did you ever stop to think how few bare spaces 

 you have seen upon the earth? How some plant or 

 bit of moss will try to grow in almost every place? 



12 



